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One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

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61–70 of 338 posts

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#61
> "So I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling," 28-year-old student Dzafran Azmir said.

> "Some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it, they hit the places where lights and masks are and broke straight through it."

That's why I try to keep my seatbelt on at all times, ever since I went through some rough turbulences on my way to Dubai (layover)

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#62
post #53

> Turbulence is most commonly caused by aircraft flying through cloud but there is also "clear air" turbulence which is not visible on a jet's weather radar nor is it possible to predict. Is this actually impossible for some theoretical constraint or have we just not invested in the R&D?

The weather radar is tuned to detect water vapour. No water vapour no way to detect the wind/turbulence

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#63
post #4

There are no details here. Thw two obvious questions that will be investigated are: 1. Was there any warning for the turbulence? A lot can be picked up by radar but not all and it depends on what equipment the airplane has although Singapore Airlines isn't known for skimping on equipment like that. 2. Was the seat belt sign on? Was the passenger wearing their seat belt? Basically, was the airline at fault? Was the cr…

I am confident that authorities (and insurance companies), will want to apportion blame. However, I want to just stress: while there are some known poor conditions tech can help pilots avoid (for example, thunder storms - pilots avoid those clouds for good reason), there are many types of turbulence which can not be predicted or detected by ground or air based systems. We are all individually responsible for our beha…

> I am confident that authorities (and insurance companies), will want to apportion blame.

In general this isn't how airline investigations actually work. They instead use the concept of "just cause" meaning that the assumption is that the system failed, and that any mistake is the child of many parents, none whom are at fault on their own. This is why flying is so safe, no one in the entire system is afraid to report failures or mistakes because the assumption is to get better, not to punish why something is bad.

There may be a single final failure but why did was the system set up to allow that to happen at all in the first place is the question. In this case there will certainly be investigations at every level from the flight crew and cabin crew training, to their sleep schedule, to the forecasts, to the flight path planning, to the policies around passengers moving around the cabin, to even how the plane was balanced on passenger and cargo loading. There's going to be a combination of factors no doubt, but no one's going to get fired (some individuals may resign or retire from the stress of handling such a situation, which no one would fault them for). Singapore just got voted the #1 airline in the world, they will take this as seriously as if the entire plane went down.

These findings will then be applied to every major airline and aircraft in the world so that it never happens again. With a few very public recent incidents, any specific type of airline accident tends to happen only once.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Has anyone died at Emirates A380 bar or Qatar minibar? Nope. I'll take my chances just as I do in thousands of scenarios a day that I just dont care to register.. This seems like a guy that when pair programming on someone else's keyboard uses gloves - we've all met them...

If you don't understand risk mitigation, or think it's someone else's job - even when, in the case of turbulence the professionals are telling you there is absolutely nothing they can do about it - then eventually you're just going to end up getting injured or killed by something that could be avoided. Yes, death by turbulence is rare, but there are dozens of serious injuries a year caused by turbulence in US air spa…

Accepting risk and believing it doesn’t apply to you are two vastly different things. I take it you don’t fly? How about driving? There is assumedly some line you draw for acceptable vs unacceptable risk

I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say here or what you’re suggesting we should do

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#66

Tragic, horrid and going to make a lot of nervous flyers more nervous. I've been through some pretty heavy turbulence in my time, but thankfully nothing this severe. I've been through enough though to know that a lot of people don't take it very seriously. I've been on flights with screaming passengers, and _very_ quiet British Marines, both in reaction to some pretty nasty air, and I'm always surprised that turbulen…

When I walk in a city I don't spend my time constantly scanning the sky and every building around me for a potential falling object. Or research the structural history of every bridge I drive over then spend hours avoiding certain ones. Or a hundred other rare things that do kill people but statistically not often. Everyone dies one day and everyone has a single life. I don't see the point of spending that one life i…

do you walk around outside and hang out under lone trees in thunderstorms?

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Has anyone died at Emirates A380 bar or Qatar minibar? Nope. I'll take my chances just as I do in thousands of scenarios a day that I just dont care to register.. This seems like a guy that when pair programming on someone else's keyboard uses gloves - we've all met them...

If you don't understand risk mitigation, or think it's someone else's job - even when, in the case of turbulence the professionals are telling you there is absolutely nothing they can do about it - then eventually you're just going to end up getting injured or killed by something that could be avoided. Yes, death by turbulence is rare, but there are dozens of serious injuries a year caused by turbulence in US air spa…

Because dozens out of hundreds of millions of passengers is a risk they're willing to take, I guess.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even cross a road with that approach to risk?

By looking both ways and therefore mitigating the risk through reducing the likelihood of being killed while crossing the road by oncoming traffic. The risk mitigation technique for dealing with severe turbulence which frequently injures people, and only rarely kills people (thankfully), is to keep your seatbelt loosely fastened, and get out of your seat only when you need to. The fact this is considered absurd by so…

Do you compare the risk of sitting still during a long-haul flight and possibly developing a DVT to the risk of being killed by turbulence? I would argue that moving around on the plane actually reduces your chance of dying, as it lowers the very real risk of a DVT-related stroke or pulmonary embolism while keeping the risk of dying in strong turbulence still extremely low.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#69
post #61

> "So I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling," 28-year-old student Dzafran Azmir said. > "Some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it, they hit the places where lights and masks are and broke straight through it." That's why I try to keep my seatbelt on…

and the belt can be loosen up so you will not notice it that is there.

I always find it amusing that the moment the seat-belts light goes off everyone unbuckles across the plane

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#70
post #26

I haven’t experienced much turbulence in maybe 15 years, whereas I remember in the 90s I experienced tons of turbulence in almost every flight. I am not sure if this is something modern airliners have been designed to deal with or avoid, or not. Has anyone else experienced this or is my memory just faulty?

I travelled a lot by plane back when I was working in Luxembourg going back and forth from Italy.

I'll always remember Luxair's tiny Bombardier DHC-8-400 [0], lot of turbulence on those every single time, I guess because they are so small compared to other planes. I had the impression that they could be easily thrown around in the sky, and don't get me started on the noise of those propellers! The combination of the two made it quite the experience.

[0]: https://airlinesfleet.com/luxair-fleet-bombardier-dash-8-q40...

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